Dr. Mariño received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires. She continued her training as a postdoc at the University of Dundee (Scotland, UK) and later, at the National Institute for Bioprocessing, Research, and Training (Dublin, Ireland), integrating her chemical vision of carbohydrates into the biochemistry of glycans and the structural analysis of glycoconjugates in physiological and pathological contexts. After relocating to Argentina, she established the Functional and Molecular Glycomics Lab (Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine). As an Independent Researcher at CONICET, she focuses on how inflammatory conditions could alter the glycome in inflammatory bowel diseases and colorectal cancer and whether these changes can promote the establishment of altered lectin-glycan interactions and, in doing so, influence the immune response. Her goal is to capitalize on glycoimmunological mechanisms that could potentially re-wire immune circuits in these pathologies, providing novel opportunities for translational medicine.
Based on her glycoanalytical experience, she also offers consultancies on glycosylation analysis to the Latin American Life Sciences Industry. She received several prizes for her work, including the "Carlos B. Udaondo" award from the National Academy of Medicine (2019). She is the current National Representative for Argentina at the International Glycoconjugate Organization.

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Celso A Reis is the Head of the Glycobiology in Cancer group at i3S-Institute for Research and Innovation in Health, University of Porto, Portugal. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of i3S and on the Board of IGO. He is a Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, University of Porto, and an invited Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto. Celso A Reis has published 227 peer-reviewed papers with over 15400 citations and with an H-index of 56 (Scopus). He is the author of several book chapters and patents. Currently, he leads an international multidisciplinary team working on glycobiology in human diseases focusing on cancer. His lab investigates the molecular mechanisms controlling glycosylation in cancer and the role of glycans during carcinogenesis and tumor progression. He has made several contributions to the development of novel strategies to improve cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and patient stratification. These include the studies on the role of glycosyltransferases regulating the biosynthesis of several glycans involved in cancer, such as those controlling critical steps on mucin-type O-glycosylation and N-glycosylation, with impact in cancer invasion and metastasis, as well as the tumor microenvironment.

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Professor Matthew P. DeLisa is the William L. Lewis Professor of Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. His research focuses on understanding and controlling the molecular mechanisms underlying protein biogenesis--folding and assembly, membrane translocation, and post-translational modifications--in the complex environment of a living cell. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1996; a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2001; and postdoctoral work at the University of Texas-Austin, Department of Chemical Engineering. DeLisa joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University in 2003. He has also served as a Gastprofessur at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in the Institut für Mikrobiologie. He has garnered a number of honors and awards, including most recently the Biotechnology Progress Award for Excellence in Biological Engineering Publication, and was named the to the inaugural “Life Sciences Power 50” by City & State New York. He is an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In recent years, he has served on the IDA/DARPA Defense Science Study Group and the National Academies Committee on Innovative Technologies to Advance Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.

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Professor Yasuhiko Kizuka has been a researcher at Disease Glycomics Team, RIKEN, led by Dr. Naoyuki Taniguchi (2009-2017). He has joined Gifu University (Japan) as an Associate Professor since 2017, and is currently the Director and Professor of Integrated Glyco-Molecular Science Center, Institute for Glyco-core Research (iGCORE) at Gifu University.
Professor Kizuka’s glyco-related contributions include discovery of novel mode of catalytic action of glycosyltransferases, elucidation of glycosyltransferase structures and development of glycosyltransferase inhibitors. His Research Interests are (1) Regulation of glycosyltransferase activity; (2) Substrate protein selectivity of glycosyltransferases; (3) Physiological functions of N-glycan branches.

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Professor Yasuhiro Kajihara received his Ph.D. from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1993. He spent two years at the Life Science Research Laboratory of Japan Tobacco Inc. as a postdoctoral fellow. In 1995 he joined Yokohama City University as an assistant professor and was then promoted to associate professor in 2001 and full professor in 2007. At YCU, he developed synthetic methods for oligosaccharides and glycoproteins. In 2009, he moved to the Department of Chemistry at Osaka University. He studies new synthetic methods of glycoproteins in order to understand how oligosaccharides regulate protein functions.

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Dr. Linda Hsieh-Wilson is a Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. She was born in New York City and obtained her B.S. degree magna cum laude in chemistry from Yale University in 1990. In 1996, she received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Peter Schultz. In 1996, she moved to Rockefeller University to study neurobiology with Professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell postdoctoral fellow. Hsieh-Wilson joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology in 2000, where she became an associate professor of chemistry in 2006 and a full professor in 2010. She was an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2005-2014, and in 2015, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Hsieh-Wilson has pioneered the application of organic chemistry to understand the roles of carbohydrates and protein glycosylation in neurobiology. Her honors include a Beckman Young Investigator Award (2000), Research Corporation Research Innovation Award (2000), Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2003), Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry (2006), Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2008), Gill Young Investigator Award in Neuroscience (2009), and Horace S. Isbell Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry (2014).

 

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Professor Atit Silsirivanit received his Ph.D. in Medical Biochemistry from Khon Kaen University in 2011. During 2014-2016, he was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to pursue postdoctoral training at the Department of Tumor Genetics and Biology, Kumamoto University, Japan. His current position is as an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. His research focuses on the involvement of glycans and glycosylation in the development and progression of cancers, including cholangiocarcinoma, glioblastoma, meningioma, and melanoma. We are currently working on 1) The role of glycans and glycosylation in cancer, 2) Identification of glycobiomarkers for cancer diagnosis, monitoring, and prognostic prediction, and 3) Application of lectins for detection of glycobiomarkers.
 

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Alice L. Yu, MD, PhD, is an Academician of Academia Sinica, Taiwan. She is a Distinguished Chair Professor & Deputy Director of the Institute of Stem Cell & Translational Cancer Research at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Professor Emeritus at the University of California in San Diego.  
As a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy, Dr. Yu has taken an anti-GD2 monoclonal antibody (Dinutuximab) from preclinical to phase III clinical trial, culminating in its FDA approval for the treatment of high-risk neuroblastoma in 2015. This marks the first immunotherapeutic agent to target glycolipids worldwide. She has continued to improve the efficacy of anti-GD2 immunotherapy through international collaboration. Her group has demonstrated the adverse impact of Globo H expression on the outcome of patients with hepatoma, cholangiocarcinoma, and gallbladder cancer. She also uncovered the roles of Globo H in cancer as an immune checkpoint molecule and angiogenic factor, providing rationales for the ongoing development of Globo H-targeted immunotherapeutics. 
She has received many awards, including the Pediatric Oncology Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in 2020, Excellence in Technology Transfer Award from Federal Laboratory Consortium (USA) in 2016, The 55th Academic Award from the Ministry of Education (Taiwan), Year 2000 "Key to Life" Award, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (USA), etc.

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Dr. Juge has 25-year expertise in the molecular studies of carbohydrate-protein recognition in gut biology and microbiology, and food biotechnology. She is a deputy leader of the Gut Microbes and Health Institute Strategic Programme at the Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB, Norwich, UK) and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Her previous research at Marseille University (France) and Carlsberg Research Institute (Copenhagen, Denmark) focused on the structure-function relationships of plant and microbial carbohydrate-active enzymes and their potential biotechnological application. Since joining QIB in 2007, she has led a Research Group focusing on the Glycobiology of Host-Microbe interactions in the gut. Currently, her group focuses mainly on defining how gut bacteria adapt to the intestinal mucosal environment and the role of mucin glycans in the crosstalk between the gut bacteria and the host. Their work uncovered novel sialic acid metabolism pathways in gut bacteria, contributing to their fitness in the mucus niche and communication with the host. They are also interested in how cell-surface glycosylation of gut symbionts influences the host immune response. Her Lab is involved in initiatives promoting Glycosciences in Europe, such as Sweet Crosstalk or Glytunes multidisciplinary European Training Networks or CarboMet academic-industry network.

 

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Dr. Jessica Kwok is an Associate Professor in Neuroscience at the University of Leeds. Her lab focuses on elucidating the functions of a pericellular coat called perineuronal net, with the main components being glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and glycoproteins, in the regulation of neuroplasticity. The role of the GAGs in plasticity and axon regeneration has been the main research topic. In the last ten years, her work has played the key role in establishing the mechanism of PNN formation, the interaction of different PNN molecules, and how the interactions define the PNN structure and exert their effects on plasticity. The work has led to the current widely accepted concept that PNNs are crucial in controlling central nervous system (CNS) plasticity. These concepts allow her to design plasticity enhancement treatment for repairing and recovering deficits in the CNS, with a focus on spinal cord injury and memory enhancement. 

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Professor Atit Silsirivanit received his Ph.D. in Medical Biochemistry from Khon Kaen University in 2011. During 2014-2016, he was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to pursue postdoctoral training at the Department of Tumor Genetics and Biology, Kumamoto University, Japan. His current position is as an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. His research focuses on the involvement of glycans and glycosylation in the development and progression of cancers, including cholangiocarcinoma, glioblastoma, meningioma, and melanoma. We are currently working on 1) The role of glycans and glycosylation in cancer, 2) Identification of glycobiomarkers for cancer diagnosis, monitoring, and prognostic prediction, and 3) Application of lectins for detection of glycobiomarkers.
 

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Professor Tadashi Suzuki received his Ph.D. (1997) from Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at University of Tokyo, Japan. He demonstrated the activity and characterized the enzymatic properties of the cytoplasmic peptide:N-glycanase (PNGase/Ngly1) mammalian cells and proposed that this enzyme may be involved in the quality control of newly synthesized glycoproteins. Dr. Suzuki was a postdoctoral fellow at Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, State University of New York at Stony Brook (1997-2000). He was an Assistant Professor at University of Tokyo (2002-2004) and a Visiting Associate Professor at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine (2004-2007). During this period, he identified two cytoplasmic glycosidases, endo-beta-N-acetylglucosaminidase (ENGase) and alpha-mannosidase (Man2C1), involved in the catabolism of free glycans released by the cytoplasmic PNGase. He was a Team Leader at Glycometabolome Team, Systems Glycobiology Research Group, RIKEN. He currently serves as a Chief Scientist at Glycometabolic Biochemistry Laboratory, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research.
His current research interests are (1) clarification of the novel catabolic pathway for glycans on glycoproteins; (2) characterization of biological functions of cytoplasmic peptide:N-glycanase (Ngly1) for the non-lysosomal catabolic pathway of N-glycans; (3) development of new analytical methods for glycans; and (4) development of therapeutics for NGLY1-deficiency. 

 

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